I travel a lot in Europe and I call lots of people in different countries not only when I'm in my home country but also while traveling. In other words, without a good tariff for international calling and data use, it's no fun. A new mobile EU-Flat tariff introduced by my mobile network operator last year has, for the first time, enabled me to use my monthly mobile data volume anywhere in the EU and to call back home without per minute fees for a modest additional monthly fee of 5 euros. This has helped a lot and apart from one exception I didn't have to use local SIM cards anymore.
One thing that the offer didn't include, however, was making calls from my home country or while traveling in the EU to fixed and mobile phones of other EU countries. At prices of well over a euro a minute this had remained prohibitively expensive. But things have moved on since then and my fixed and mobile network operator of choice has made me a bundle offer to extend my current EU-flat to also include voice calls from anywhere in the EU to anywhere in the EU to both fixed and mobile devices. Yes, that's what I've been waiting for for some many years. The 'everything inclusive anywhere EU-Flat' now costs an extra 10 euros on top of my normal fixed line and mobile contracts instead of the 5 euros I paid before but with my usage pattern that's a deal I was more than willing to take.
No longer waiting to make some calls only until I'm back home or in the office or by using complicated dial-in numbers, no nightmares about costs spiraling out of control because that conference call only offers an international dial-in number, it's definitely my tariff add-on of the year!
P.S.: No, this is not an advertisement for a particular fixed and mobile network operator which is why I haven't named the company in the first place. This blog entry is about documenting a very positive change in the telecommunication market and to encourage other network operators to follow.